This invention relates generally to a system and method for delivering content to information appliances and in particular to a system and method for permitting web pages in different formats to be communicated to various different information appliances having different display footprints.
Today, people have an unquenchable thirst for information that demands instant access at any time or place to the information. There has been explosive growth in the handheld computing market and in the cell phone market with over 300 million users worldwide. In addition, there has been a continued increase in the number of people with access to the Internet. These three different markets will soon converge as cell phones and handheld computers will have web browsers (xe2x80x9cmini browsersxe2x80x9d) integrated therein. To promote the convergence, cell phone manufacturers and wireless data network providers have attempted to standardize Internet content distribution with the wireless application protocol (WAP). Internet content providers have been slow to adopt these standards and now several major device manufacturers have begun to create their own proprietary standards.
Two factors hinder the extension of the Web and is content from the personal computer (PC) environment with fairly standard display formats to the non-PC based information appliances and devices. First, re-purposing and converting existing PC-centric HTML web sites to the new breed of information appliances with drastically varying screen sizes is very problematic. For example, it is not appropriate to put the content of a PC-centric web site onto a small smart phone screen linearly. An intelligent navigation scheme that automatically converts content intended for the PC into content applicable to one or more different information appliances is needed. This intelligent navigation scheme would optimally vary its output based on the screen size of the particular information appliance. Second, most current wireless content delivery solutions demand adherence to proprietary browsers, proprietary mark-up languages and/or proprietary protocols.
As FIG. 1 illustrates, there are currently multiple different mark-up languages 2, multiple different protocols 3 and different browsers 4. For example, Phone.com has introduced both the HDML and the WML protocols for cellular telephones in the United States, whereas Japan has adopted the I-mode protocol. Palm Pilot devices support a variant of the HTML protocol that uses web-clipping, while Windows CE devices support only a limited HTML protocol using special software such as Pocket Explorer. To establish an effective wireless presence, a company with content must support the multitude of different information appliances 5, the different protocols 3, the different markup languages 2 and the different browsers 4.
The number of devices, protocols and mark-up languages create a large matrix of different combinations of devices, protocols and languages wherein each combination requires a different web server. The rewriting of a site for each mark-up language and for interfacing with each different protocol and screen size is expensive, complicated and time consuming. In addition, because each different device may have a different input/output format, such as a different screen size, the presentation of information on any one device is not optimized, for example, for its screen size due to the variety of formatting alternatives.
Most of the prior approaches to wireless content delivery have involved linking a certain browser with a certain protocol and a certain mark-up language. There is not a single standard that is pervasive throughout the multitude of wireless handheld devices and information appliances. As a consequence of this lack of a standard, content providers are forced to re-author and re-format their web pages in order to generate content for each of these devices.
Compatible languages, such as Extensible Markup Language (XML), a software language designed especially for Web documents, have become much more mature and permit re-formatting of HTML or XML web pages on-the-fly to formats that individual devices can utilize. However, none of these conventional systems and solutions provide a single unified system that permits web pages having different formats and mark-up languages to be delivered to different information appliances that may use different protocols, different browsers, or have different input/output formats (e.g., different screen sizes). Thus, none of the conventional systems provide an intelligent navigation system wherein content may be delivered in a customized manner to the different information appliances.
Another problem with the conventional systems is that content providers have not been able to control the xe2x80x9clook and feelxe2x80x9d of their site using these other solutions so that the site may look very different on different devices. It is desirable, however, to provide a system that will allow these sites to customize the presentation of their site web pages to the wide variety of information appliances. Thus, it is desirable to provide a content delivery system and method that solves the above limitations and problems with the conventional systems and it is to this end that the present invention is directed.
The content delivery system and method in accordance with the invention solves the above problems and limitations with conventional systems and solutions by providing a system and method that delivers Web-based content, commerce, enabling transactions, and services to a variety of information appliances and devices without requiring the re-authoring of the content information for display on each of these different devices.
In accordance with the invention, the system and method permits content to be input into the system in a variety of different formatting languages. In addition, the system permits the formatted content to be output in any mark-up language and protocol, such as WML, HTML, HDML, XML, etc. Advantageously, each display page on the device may be customized. To organize the content for display on the devices, the received content information may be mapped into a hierarchy of groups so that the content information can be optimally formatted for display on the devices according to the input/output format, such as the display screen size parameters of the devices.
In more detail, the method for content delivery may include intelligently harvesting content from a web page to provide that content to a plurality of different information appliances having different screen sizes. The intelligent harvesting may convert the content into a proprietary relational markup language (RML) and generate a tree and then a document object model from the RML content. The tree may then be analyzed and searched using a set of processing rules in order to generate content screens customized to each information appliance. A typical card builder may build the card corresponding to the customized content and a typical deck builder may build a deck of cards corresponding to the one or more display screens that make up the content for the particular information appliance. The deck of cards may then be converted into a presentation format and protocol for the particular information appliance and sent to that information appliance.